Dairy industry 'on its knees'

"It's an added cost, but with dairy heifers we've got no choice, they're not like beef cattle.

"We can't sell them, so we've got to look after them to the maximum, otherwise we won't get any benefit when they do come into the dairy.

"The difficulty in selling dairy heifers is the dairy industry is on its knees. No one wants dairy cattle.

"We can send them to the abattoirs and kill them, but no one wants dairy cattle coming into this springtime pricing because most of us cop a fair reduction into spring with low milk prices, so no one is in the market to buy cattle.

"Low milk prices, high irrigation costs, cattle prices at the abattoirs and saleyards have dropped significantly, so there's a real challenge there.

"General stress on people is very high, and it's not really acknowledged very much. There's a lot of problems."

Planning for extremes

With conditions already desperately dry across large swathes of the state, the NSW Government's Hunter Local Land Services (LLS) organisation is urging landholders to prepare for the added stress of warm spring and summer conditions.

"It's been a very dry winter, we've had a very dry start to the spring," Simon Turpin, LLS agriculture extensions team leader, said.

"It's like any other natural, extreme weather — fire or flooding — it's time to plan.

"It's all about planning for these things, and so it's not about how dire it is or how it's going to get, it's starting to plan that it may get worse.

"Think about selling — and probably sell earlier rather than later.

"If we go into summer and it doesn't rain, feed prices will keep going up, stock prices will go down, pastures won't be there to feed off. Planning is the key."

Farmer Ian MacCallum said conditions could turn around quickly if steady rain came.

"I would imagine people in this area are under a lot of stress at the moment; I know we are," he said.

"You're always hoping for rain, you've got to be optimistic. If you're not optimistic, you quickly go down.

"We'll get out of trouble quite quickly, but we've got to get that rain."